Golda Rosheuval

            On Saturday morning I memorized the fourth verse of “Et quand bien même” (And Even If) by Serge Gainsbourg. That’s half the song. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the second of two sessions. I figure I’ll alternate between the Gibson and the Kramer during the days I’m rehearsing with electric guitars so I get a better feel of which one is best for which songs. 

            I weighed 88.15 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since June 1. 

            Around midday I attached the two bags that I bought for my Burley bike trailer, hitched the trailer to my bike and headed down to No Frills. The cherries were on sale for the same price as the ones at Freshco and so I bought another seven bags. The cherries filled the smaller upper market bag on the trailer. I also got bananas, a whole chicken, Basilica sauce, a jug of orange juice, two bags of Miss Vickie’s chips and two containers of skyr. They’ve only had the Siggis skyr for the last three weeks, but I prefer the much thicker PC skyr. While I was reattaching my trailer to the bike an older woman stopped to tell me I was smart. She said she hangs her groceries over her handlebars but added that she only shops for herself even though she is with her husband. She says he does his own shopping. 

            When I got home I went out to buy a six-pack of Creemore. 

            I weighed 87 kilos before lunch. I had a toasted Montreal style bagel with the last of the liverwurst and a glass of lemon iced tea. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 86.9 kilos at 17:12. That’s the least I’ve tipped a scale in the evening since May 28. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:15. 

            I reviewed the song practice videos of my performances of “Mamadou” and “The Post Colonial Breakdown” from September 12 to 15. On September 12 I played “Mamadou” on my Martin acoustic guitar and the take at the beginning of part B was okay but the light was bad. On September 14 I played it on my Kramer electric guitar and the take at 4:30 in part B wasn’t bad. I played “The Post Colonial Breakdown” on the Martin on September 13 and the take in Part B was doing fine until the battery charge timed out after the second verse. I played it on the Kramer on September 15 but the battery charge in part B ran out at the beginning of the third take. Now I have twenty five songs to re-review to find the best of four categories: acoustic in French, acoustic in English, electric in French and electric in English. I’ll start tomorrow by comparing the six outstanding acoustic takes of “Mamadou” to figure out which of those I’ll upload to YouTube. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Angeline” I added another clip of Jimmy Stewart falling in the dream sequence of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Then I synchronized the concert video with the studio audio for the line, “I’ll just resign myself to falling…”. It goes out of synch again when I sing “…Angeline” so I added another clip of Mickey Dolenz falling in Head so they are lined up again while I finish singing “…Angeline”. After that begins the final three repetitions of “and since I can’t see the bottom I’ll resign myself to falling” but for the first line the video and audio were out of synch again. I added another clip from Vertigo, another from Head and a second from Vertigo. I’ll work on trying to line up the video and audio for that first line tomorrow. 

            I made four ground beef patties and grilled them in the oven. Then chopped one of them and put it onto a pizza crust with Basilica sauce and five-year-old cheddar. After the cheese was melted I had it with a beer while watching season 14, episode 1 of Doctor Who. 

            The story overlaps with the last scene of the Christmas special in which Ruby walks into the Tardis. There are a lot of boring explanations for people who’ve never seen the series before. They spend way too much time and kind of hit the viewer over the head with it. They go millions of years in the past and Ruby is worried about stepping on a butterfly. The doctor assures her that it’s impossible to step on a butterfly since they won’t stand still for it. They go outside to view a herd of dinosaurs then Ruby steps on a butterfly and immediately changes all history and she transforms into a different kind of human that is hatched and not born and is also potentially deadly. The doctor picks up the butterfly, breathes on it, brings it back to life and then Ruby is back to normal. 

            They travel to a space station. Since they travelled through the walls Ruby asks, “Is that like a matter transporter on Star Trek?” The Doctor says, “We’ve got to visit them one day”. That implies that the Star Trek universe exists within the Doctor Who universe. While exploring the corridors of a space station that does not seem to be functioning properly they encounter a monster that terrifies the Doctor to his surprise, since he has faced some horrific creatures. They escape into an elevator that takes them above to a room where babies are being incubated. They are on a baby farm meant originally to populate a colony. Then a baby named Eric in an automatic stroller rolls in to check on the temperature fluctuations. When he sees the Doctor and Ruby he says, “We’ve been waiting for you for a long time. Mommy, Daddy”. Then he goes to tell the others. They follow him to a room full of babies in similar strollers. They all think their parents have arrived. CGI is used to make the babies talk as they each explain their functions on the ship. The Doctor tells them they aren’t their mommy and daddy. Ruby gives one of them a hug and they all want one because they’ve never been hugged. The Doctor learns from the records that the crew abandoned the babies but he doesn’t know why. It has been six years since they were born but they are still babies. Then they are introduced to the voice of their Nanny who seems to be the ship’s computer. She announces that it is time to blow their noses and robot arms holding tissues extend for each baby. The Doctor mentions the monster below and they are all terrified. Eric says it’s the Bogeyman. Nanny tells the Doctor to access portal 357. On their way there the Doctor tells Ruby that there is a connection with her being abandoned as a baby and their adventures involving babies. Then it starts to snow on the station as they remember the snow when she was abandoned. Then Nanny steps out of portal 357 and tells them to come inside. She explains the government closed the baby stations because of the recession but it’s illegal to stop the birth machine (an obvious reference to the real reproductive issues and the conflict between pro life and pro choice on Earth). Nanny says her name is Jocelyn and she was the accountant but when everybody abandoned the babies she couldn’t bring herself to leave them. She hides because she doesn’t want to see them die. There is a planet that harbours refugees within the same solar system as the station. The Tardis could take them all there but between them and the Tardis is the Bogeyman. Ruby has the insight that with babies, a nanny and a monster below, this is literally a children’s story. Then Eric appears on the video screen on the level where the monster lives. He says he plans to tell the Bogeyman off. The Doctor and Ruby rush to save Eric. They find his stroller empty. They make noise to attract the monster and it chases them. They find Eric in a storage unit by the smell of his diaper. The monster corners them but the other babies come with a flamethrower to drive the monster back. Jocelyn has the babies return above. She says the Bogeyman first appeared six years ago. Ruby observes that’s when the babies were born. The monster leaves slime and flakes behind. The Doctor takes a piece to a computer outlet below for it to be analyzed. Two parts of the same machine grew the babies and the Bogeyman. The monster was created from a story for the babies. The Bogeyman is literally a boogieman made out of the babies’ boogers which are automatically disposed of below after their noses are blown. The Doctor says “It’s snot!” Ruby says, “It’s not! Then the Bogeyman finds them and they run. Jocelyn guides them as the monster gives chase until Jocelyn traps it in an airlock. Then she opens it to try to shoot it out into space. It hangs on desperately as the Doctor tells Jocelyn that the Bogeyman is one of the children. The Doctor sends Ruby to stop Jocelyn while he enters the airlock and hangs on to keep from being sucked into space while he tries to make his way to the off button. He does and pushes it. Later Jocelyn has revealed herself to the babies and the Bogeyman is now a pet. The Doctor says the buildup of pressure in Hull 3B is from six years of dirty diapers being stored there. A zillion metric tons of methane which the Doctor now ejects into space providing enough propulsion to send the space station towards the refugee planet. 

            The Doctor gives Ruby her own key to the Tardis. He tells her they can go anywhere and when but not to the moment at the church on Ruby Road when she was abandoned. If she were to change one thing it would change her birth mother’s story and they would fall into a deep, dark paradox. The snow falling on the station was a warning. 

            It’s Christmas Eve on Ruby’s birthday and the Tardis appears in the kitchen of her adopted mother’s house. The Doctor follows Ruby out and behind him it’s snowing on the Tardis. 

            Jocelyn was played by Golda Rosheuval, who was born in Guyana and moved to England when she was five. In her teens she was a star athlete. She studied performance and then musical theatre. She played Donna in a European tour of Hair. In 2018 she played a lesbian Othello. Her television debut was in a production of Jesus Christ Superstar. She played Queen Charlotte on Bridgerton and on the spin-off Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story.